ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Simulations uncover 'flashy' secrets of merging black holes
• Nickelblock: An element's love-hate relationship with battery electrodes
• Doctoral student developing next generation of lithium-ion batteries for longer lasting mobile devices, electric cars
• Measuring the universe’s 'exit door': For the first time, an international team has measured the radius of a black hole
• NASA rover finds old streambed on Martian surface
• Uranium-contaminated site yields wealth of information on microbes 10 feet under
• Electronics that vanish in the environment or the body
• Probability maps help sniff out food contamination
• Cyborg surgeon: Hand and technology combine in new surgical tool that enables superhuman precision
• New efficiency record for photovoltaic cells, thanks to heterojunction
• Scaling up polymer blobs
• Supernova SN 1006: Cause of brightest stellar event in recorded history illuminated
• Pluto/Charon poses for sharpest ground-based images ever
• Why common explosive sometimes fails

Simulations uncover 'flashy' secrets of merging black holes Posted: 27 Sep 2012 12:31 PM PDT Researchers are using computational models to explore the mergers of supersized black holes. Their most recent work investigates what kind of "flash" might be seen by telescopes when astronomers ultimately find gravitational signals from such an event.

Nickelblock: An element's love-hate relationship with battery electrodes Posted: 27 Sep 2012 12:25 PM PDT Battery materials on the nano-scale reveal how nickel forms a physical barrier that impedes the shuttling of lithium ions in the electrode, reducing how fast the materials charge and discharge. The research also suggests a way to improve the materials.

Doctoral student developing next generation of lithium-ion batteries for longer lasting mobile devices, electric cars Posted: 27 Sep 2012 12:21 PM PDT Researchers are developing new materials that could be used in future lithium-ion batteries. The materials look to improve the energy storage capacity of batteries so that laptops, cellphones, electric cars and other mobile devices will last longer between charges.

Measuring the universe’s 'exit door': For the first time, an international team has measured the radius of a black hole Posted: 27 Sep 2012 11:45 AM PDT The point of no return: In astronomy, it's known as a black hole -- a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Black holes that can be billions of times more massive than our sun may reside at the heart of most galaxies. Such supermassive black holes are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies. Now, an international team has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy -- the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.

NASA rover finds old streambed on Martian surface Posted: 27 Sep 2012 11:23 AM PDT NASA's Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but this evidence -- images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels -- is the first of its kind.

Uranium-contaminated site yields wealth of information on microbes 10 feet under Posted: 27 Sep 2012 11:15 AM PDT At sites contaminated with heavy metals, remediation often involves feeding the naturally occurring bacteria in the soil to encourage them to turn soluble metals into solids that won't leech into aquifers and streams. To find out what these microbes are doing, scientists performed a metagenomic analysis of the underground microbial community at one former uranium mill site in Colorado, assigning more than 150,000 sequenced genes to 80 bacteria and Archaea.

Electronics that vanish in the environment or the body Posted: 27 Sep 2012 11:15 AM PDT Physicians and environmentalists alike could soon be using a new class of electronic devices: small, robust and high performance, yet also biocompatible and capable of dissolving completely in water – or in bodily fluids. Researchers have demonstrated a new type of biodegradable electronics technology that could introduce new design paradigms for medical implants that resorb into the body, environmental monitors and compostable consumer devices.

Probability maps help sniff out food contamination Posted: 27 Sep 2012 11:13 AM PDT Uncovering the sources of fresh food contamination could become faster and easier thanks to analysis done at Sandia National Laboratories' National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC). The study demonstrates how developing a probability map of the food supply network using stochastic network representation might shorten the time it takes to track down contaminated food sources.

Cyborg surgeon: Hand and technology combine in new surgical tool that enables superhuman precision Posted: 27 Sep 2012 10:02 AM PDT Normally, surgeons' tiny hand tremors are inconsequential to the task, but for doctors specializing in fine-scale surgery, such as operating inside the human eye, freehand tremors can pose a serious risk for patients. By harnessing a specialized optical fiber sensor, a new "smart" surgical tool can compensate for this unwanted movement by making hundreds of precise position corrections each second – fast enough to keep the surgeon's hand on target.

New efficiency record for photovoltaic cells, thanks to heterojunction Posted: 27 Sep 2012 10:02 AM PDT Scientists have developed photovoltaic cells with an energy conversion efficiency of 21.4 percent, the highest obtained for the type of substrate they used. This breakthrough will contribute to lowering the cost of solar-cell-based installations.

Scaling up polymer blobs Posted: 27 Sep 2012 06:16 AM PDT Several new simulations performed on polymers outline their scaling-up behavior at extreme limits where it depends on their density and length.

Supernova SN 1006: Cause of brightest stellar event in recorded history illuminated Posted: 27 Sep 2012 06:15 AM PDT Between April 30 and May 1 of the year 1006, the brightest stellar event ever recorded in history occurred: a supernova, or stellar explosion, that was widely observed by various civilizations from different places on Earth. More than a thousand years later, researchers have found that the supernova of 1006 (SN 1006) probably occurred as a result of the merger of two white dwarfs.

Pluto/Charon poses for sharpest ground-based images ever Posted: 26 Sep 2012 06:39 PM PDT Despite being infamously demoted from its status as a major planet, Pluto (and its largest companion Charon) recently posed as a surrogate extrasolar planetary system to help astronomers produce exceptionally high-resolution images with the Gemini North 8-meter telescope. Using a method called reconstructive speckle imaging, the researchers took the sharpest ground-based snapshots ever obtained of Pluto and Charon in visible light, which hint at the exoplanet verification power of a large state-of-the-art telescope when combined with speckle imaging techniques.

Why common explosive sometimes fails Posted: 26 Sep 2012 06:31 PM PDT The explosive PETN has been around for a century and is used by everyone from miners to the military, but it took new research to begin to discover key mechanisms behind what causes it to fail at small scales.

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